October 27, 2009 – Washington – AJC’s expert on Latin America told members of the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs today that Iran’s expanding ties to countries in the Western Hemisphere pose a threat to all nations in the region, including the United States.
“Venezuela is the gateway to heightened cooperation between Iran and other countries in Latin America,” said Dina Siegel Vann, director of AJC’s Latino and Latin America Institute, in testimony before members of three House Foreign Affairs subcommittees. AJC first exposed the increasing Iranian presence in the region in 2005, when Caracas and Tehran “made a strategic decision to expand their economic and political relations,” and Siegel Vann presented an updated report to the House committee.
The solidity of the Venezuelan-Iranian relationship was recently demonstrated in the eighth visit of Hugo Chavez to Tehran, said Siegel Vann. Of grave concern is next month’s visit of President Ahmadinejad to Brazil, which Siegel Vann said “can legitimize the Iranian leader’s extremist positions regardless of President Lula’s best intentions.”
Indeed, since Ahmadinejad’s first election in 2005, Iran has inaugurated, reestablished and increased its diplomatic representation in ten Latin nations, including Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Siegel Vann noted that Iran’s outreach to Latin America is far from innocent commercial and economic ties. She reminded the House members that Iran, and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah, have been implicated in the 1994 terrorist bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Interpol has issued red notices for the arrest of several Iranian officials, including Defense Minister Ahmed Vahiid; Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was president of Iran in 1994; and Mohsen Rezei, a commander of the powerful Revolutionary Guards from 1981-97, who ran as the conservative candidate in the recent presidential elections.
“As Tehran attempts to expand its influence in our Hemisphere, it’s important to understand that, today as yesterday, the so-called moderates in Iran’s ruling circles have been directly involved in exporting terrorism and massacring innocents,” said Siegel Vann.
Since the AMIA bombing, “Hezbollah has greatly increased its presence and fundraising activity in the Tri-Border Area shared by Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay,” said Siegel Vann. The most recent U.S. State Department Country Report on Terrorism, published in April 2009, confirmed that pockets of ideological sympathizers in South America and the Caribbean lend financial and moral support to terrorist groups in the Middle East, she added.
In conclusion, Siegel Vann urged the U.S. government to give greater attention to the growing strategic relationship between countries in the Western Hemisphere and Iran. “Concerted and decisive action is needed to closely monitor the activity of Iran and the groups it subsidizes, to correctly assess their potential for mischief, and to establish mechanisms to prevent potentially dangerous scenarios,” she said.
The full AJC testimony is available at www.ajc.org.
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